City Lights Booksonixsuitesupport@onixsuite.com20161210engCOM.ONIXSUITE.97808728650200301City Lights Books020872865029039780872865020159780872865020BC01City Lights Spotlight01Free CellCity Lights Spotlight No. 201GCOI872861007082801A01Anselm BerriganBerrigan, AnselmAnselmBerrigan<p>Anselm Berrigan's poetry collections include <i>Zero Star Hotel</i> and <i>Some Notes on My Programming</i> (Edge Books 2002, 2006). The poetry editor of <i>The Brooklyn Rail</i>, co-editor with Alice Notley and Edmund Berrigan of <i>The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan</i> (California, 2005), and former director of St. Mark's Poetry Project, Berrigan teaches at the Pratt Institute and Wesleyan, and directs the summer writing program at the Milton Avery Graduate School.</p> <p>Berrigan writes for <a target="blank" href="http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/">Harriet</a>, a blog from the Poetry Foundation.</p>01eng100001000320experimental poetry;new york;poetry;politics24Internet CL HierarchyPoetry03<p>
<strong>Listen to Anselm Berrigan read from <em>Free Cell</em> at our City Lights podcast page.</strong><br />
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The second installment of the City Lights Spotlight poetry series, <em>Free Cell</em> is the latest collection from Anselm Berrigan, one of the most significant American poets under 40. Consisting of two experimental suites—"Have a Good One" and "To Hell with Sleep"—connected by the central poem "Let Us Sample Protection Together," <em>Free Cell</em> is Berrigan's most ambitious work to date, a spiritual autobiography wrapped in an exploration of form. His work combines the freneticism of his New York environment with oblique humor, political angst, and a reflective, lyrical interrogation of his own subjectivity: "For my part it's/ been an honor/ to be at someone's/ service, though doing/ so has diminished/ my expiration date/ and my astral self-/ projection has already/ fled in bitter tears/ having used up even addiction."<br />
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"Step outside with your language as Anselm Berrigan moves the parts about, seeing them dive through distress to rally with duly measured exhortation. The pitch is feverish: a topical Season in Hell, restorative history lessons during intermission, followed by a kind of precisely tumbling Grosse Fugue. The sensations never quit. (Poetry's our sole 'hedge against protection'?) This is a book to clear the decks."<br />
—<strong>Bill Berkson</strong></p>
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"Impacted, trenchant, turbulent, heartbreaking and funny too, <em>Free Cell</em> is one poet's free fall through the streaming kaleidoscopic pixilated cacophony of now. Anselm Berrigan has consistently, and always boldly, delivered the news of his generation's angle of incident."<br />
<strong>—Peter Gizzi</strong></p>
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"The world of <em>Free Cell</em> keeps repeating "have a good one" over and over, in anger, in sarcasm, and also just because it's what one needs to hear to keep going. Anselm Berrigan is the poet of the bodily breakdown, the poet of lyric memory, the poet that is this testy and yet also beautiful world needs right now."<br />
<strong>—Juliana Spahr</strong></p>02The second volume in the City Lights Spotlight series—experimental poems by innovative New York poet and former St. Mark's Poetry Project director.0701http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6702296.html?industryid=47159Publisher's Weekly08<p>"Berrigan may have learned some of his disjunctive sprawl and spontaneity from his famous poet parents, Alice Notley and especially Ted Berrigan, but his poems have a kind of slacker cool and political awareness all his own . . . he is carrying his parents' tradition of poetry as a way of life, a community, proudly into the 21st century." —Publishers Weekly</p>Publisher's Weekly08<p>"<em>Free Cell</em> is the latest collection of free-verse poetry from writing instructor and dedicated poet Anselm Berrigan. The words themselves revel in the freedom to assume any shape in this smoothly rolling collection of musings and insights. The natural flow of the verbal rhythm serves as the perfect counterpoint to the thought-provoking commentary in this excellent collection. 'Frailty puckers up to present': Frailty puckers up to present / gibberish in the agri-fab / spamways, helicopter can’t / swim, can’t junk tribal / penance for living off natty / whims so many pairs of / pants deny in fever’s dash. // The routine bites hard, ooze / a rapt factory heir teething / sway, ye olde time cleaners / spun off a granted project / of abeyance in the deep / trim that art savors, bent- / like, creaming dabbles.’"<br /> —James A. Cox, <em>The Midwest Book Review</em><br /> </p>The Midwest Book Review0701http://www.brooklynrail.org/2009/11/books/tokens-nov-09The Brooklyn Rail08<p>"[Berrigan] digests and mercilessly composts an endless variety of speech, with an excellent ear for the comedy of the banal—the sounds of corporate brainstorming sessions, rich people, even the unsympathetic reader. . . When he writes 'I like moving / your careful parts about,' he must be addressing Language, and reading this poem one gets the impression Berrigan may go on moving her parts indefinitely, as he follows the ominous momentum of these poems ‘Back to the brink, as ever.’" — Julia Powers, <em>The Brooklyn Rail </em></p>The Brooklyn Rail0701http://galatearesurrection13.blogspot.com/2009/12/have-good-one-by-anselm-berrigan.htmlGalatea Resurrects08<p>"Anselm Berrigan's voice continues be one of the most refreshing in contemporary American poetry, for its singular welding of candor, political awareness, and humor that attempts, with a very high rate of success, to co-opt the commercial and political jargon of our times to return it to higher purposes (which here include but are not limited to free speech, dead-on paeans to and condemnations of contemporary life, and love)." <br /> —Virginia Konchan</p>Galatea Resurrects0701http://thebrakelights.com/blog/2009/12/27/3-awesome-reads-to-kickstart-2010/The Brake Lights08<p>"Anselm Berrigan's free radical poetry chops your hands off mid-line, drops the book into your lap, and caresses you with disquiet indie pop allusions and echoes of ubiquitous advertising absurdities as it cheers on that last ill-intentioned pint before the crestfallen exit from the pub on a Monday night while ambitiously and unambiguously telling you <em>it might not be OK, but I wouldn't know anyway</em>." <br /> —Jason Eric Jensen</p>The Brake Lights0701http://awdart.vox.com/library/post/review-of-anselm-berrigans-free-cell.html?_c=feed-atomawdart.vox.com08<p>"The lines through-out are high strung wires of speech act and innovative lyric. . . . [The work] could be climbed for days, years even. Yet it isn't insurmountable. It unravels with enough common linguistic rope to be followed by a smart and curious kid. The kid has to want to make the climb and that is one of the hardest tricks to pull off with integrity intact. Anselm does his best, using varied speeds, humor, drama, flat conceptual art movements giving pause to heightened lyricism, sharp images, double speak, puns, weird juxtapositions. Yet the integrity part is an essential element. It isn't any trick at all, but an intuitive sense of felt empathy which is the biggest carrot to the untried reader." </p>awdart.vox.com0701http://poetryproject.orgThe Poetry Project Newsletter08<p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">"These are poems about getting by in the human universe through 'the icing of all personal / bureaucracies,' offices of existence where small and large injustices trigger passions within us that cannibalize us down to appetizers until we can regenerate in the company of fellow travelers." </span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">—</span><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";">Paul Killebrew</span></p>The Poetry Project Newsletter2301http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100708280/extras/FreeCellExcerptCL.pdfTable of Contents and first 12 pages from Free Cell44<p> <em>The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.</em><br /> —Lawrence Ferlinghetti</p> <p> Beginning with the Pocket Poets Series and the publication of <em>Howl</em>, City Lights has played a vital role in American poetry for over 50 years. In the tradition of the press's storied poetic origins, we are pleased to announce a new series, City Lights Spotlight. Bay Area poet Garrett Caples will edit the series.</p> <p> City Lights Spotlight hopes to shine a light on the wealth of innovative American poetry being written today. We intend to publish accomplished figures known in the poetry community as well as young emerging poets, using the cultural visibility of City Lights to bring their work to a wider audience. In doing so, we also seek to draw attention to those small presses publishing such authors.</p> <p> "With the Spotlight series, we're hoping to grow the audience for the poets we'll publish, and also to introduce our readers to the rich world of contemporary innovative poetry we’ll be drawing from. It’s an opportunity for City Lights to play a meaningful role in a different way, and it’s a natural complement to our established poetry program," says City Lights Executive Director and Publisher Elaine Katzenberger.</p> <p> As City Lights founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, wrote in his recent <em>Poetry as Insurgent Art</em>, "If you would be a poet, experiment with all manner of poetics . . . to create your own limbic, your own underlying voice, your <em>ur</em> voice." With City Lights Spotlight, we seek to maintain this standard of innovation and inclusiveness, publishing highly original poetry from across the cultural spectrum, and reaffirming our longstanding commitment to this most ancient and stubbornly enduring form of art.</p>300701http://www.citylights.com/resources/titles/87286100708280/extras/Sarah_interview_with_Anselm.MP3080201http://www.citylights.com/resources/persons/9200.gif02http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100708280City Lights Publishers01City Lights Publishers0420090827200908454gr0816oz07631-760XConsortium Book Sales & Distribution612/746-2600612/746-2606info@cbsd.com33www.cbsd.comhttp://www.cbsd.com03WORLD200113.95USD